Christmas in July and some bedtime reading

I am making great progress on our Christmas stockings. You know, the ones that were supposed to be finished last year. I'm on my final kid stocking and then I can add their names and pick a fabric for the lining.

 

Here is Emily's. She loved this stocking, but it felt incomplete with only two children on it. So I drew another girl to cover the dog that we don't have, and it's turning out pretty neat. She's almost done but I'll wait for the full reveal until it's complete. I also have Sam's finished stocking to show you as well.

This morning Emily came to me with a stack of books and said "this is what I read last night after going to bed." I asked how she had enough light to read. "I found my flashlight." Where there is a will, there is a way. I'm impressed that she read all of those in one sitting. So much for an early bedtime to catch up on the sleep she missed over the week-end.

We are doing reading challenges at both our library and Barnes and Noble this year. Plus I added another for them since both of those felt too fluffly. If they read 100 books before school starts, they will get a prize. We only started that a couple of days ago and I think we have just 50 days left before school. But they are rocking it at 20-30 books already a piece.

Here is the stack she wanted to read in addition last night but got too sleepy. Quite ambitious I'd say.

 

We have another trip to the library planned today as we have read all the ones we have out now. Reading really took off for Emily last year and Allison is following suit. At the beginning of the year she wasn't quite through with reading at a kindergarten level and now she is beyond 3rd grade.

I just acquired a sore throat so reading and stitching will be a nice speed for the rest of the day. I personally am reading the Sue Grafton alphabet mysteries and am on letter J. Funny to read books from the 1980's. I keep thinking "if only she had a cell phone with her, those last few paragraphs would have been pointless." Ha!

What are your kids up to this summer? Are you making them read too? We are also doing math flashcards to get quicker at simple addition and subtraction and Allison is going to write a letter to her teacher next week in response to a letter she just sent us, to let her know about the work she is doing.